Journey to the Sunnyside

You’d think a hangover would be enough to stop drinking. For most people, it’s not. In this episode, we look at why delayed consequences don’t change behavior, how the brain prioritizes immediate relief, and what cravings are really responding to. Once you understand the timing problem at the center of drinking habits, a lot of things start to make sense.

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Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.



Creators and Guests

Host
Mike Hardenbrook
#1 best-selling author of "No Willpower Required," neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert.

What is Journey to the Sunnyside?

Journey to the Sunnyside is a top 1% podcast, reaching over 500,000 listeners every week. It’s your guide to exploring mindful living with alcohol—whether you're cutting back, moderating, or thinking about quitting.

While Sunnyside helps you reduce your drinking, this podcast goes further, diving into topics like mindful drinking, sober curiosity, moderation, and full sobriety. Through real stories, expert insights, and science-backed strategies, we help you find what actually works for your journey.

Hosted by Mike Hardenbrook, a #1 best-selling author and neuroscience enthusiast, the show is dedicated to helping people transform their relationship with alcohol—without shame, judgment, or rigid rules.

This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the leading platform for mindful drinking. Want to take the next step in your journey? Head over to sunnyside.co for a free 15-day trial.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in our episodes do not necessarily represent those of Sunnyside. We’re committed to sharing diverse perspectives on health and wellness. If you’re concerned about your drinking, please consult a medical professional. Sunnyside, this podcast, and its guests are not necessarily medical providers and the content is not medical advice. We do not endorse drinking in any amount.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to another one of these ten minute Mondays, and I hope you had a great weekend. And the weekends tend to be the times when we might overdo it, and I think today's episode is gonna hit home for a lot of you. So most of us probably are familiar with this feeling. You wake up. Oh, no.

Speaker 1:

What did I do last night? My head is pounding. I overdid it. Maybe nothing happened specifically, but you just don't feel good. You have that low level or high level anxiety going on and you just can't shake it.

Speaker 1:

And you might sit up and say to yourself, that's it. I'm done. Or no more of this. Or today, I'm changing. No exceptions.

Speaker 1:

And I've made tons of these promises to myself. And in that moment, you actually mean it. And that part is genuine and it's real. But then all of a sudden, we find ourselves maybe even as soon as that night or a day or two later, find ourselves wanting to have a drink again and actually having a drink again. And that's the part that really messes with people.

Speaker 1:

I know it did for myself, all these broken promises. We assume then that it means that we don't actually want to change or maybe that we lack discipline or even worse, making comparisons saying we're different from people who can just, you know, they decide that's it and then they do it. But here's the topic at hand today, because if hangovers actually worked as a deterrent, most of us would have already figured this out years ago. For a long time, I thought hangovers were part of this journey, this lesson that I needed to learn, the consequence of my actions. You know, I'd wake up.

Speaker 1:

I'd feel terrible, and I mentally catalog basically everything that I was doing, the sleep I lost, how I felt that day, the anxiousness. And I'd go for these runs, and I'd listen to tapes, and I'd say tonight's gonna be different. And, honestly, I believe that that memory would protect me leading up to the next time that I had the opportunity to either elect to drink or to pass on it. But the problem is, I never did. But it's not because I forgot how bad I felt.

Speaker 1:

The brain just doesn't learn that way. The brain learns from timing, not logic, as much as we'd like to think that. Immediate feedback shapes our behavior and delayed consequences, they usually don't. And there's actually a name for this. It's called temporal discounting.

Speaker 1:

But all it really means is that the further away a consequence is from the action, the less the brain cares about it. So when something feels good right away, the brain marks it as useful. When something feels bad hours later, that connection weakens and it weakens very fast. And the gap doesn't have to be huge. As much as we would probably take a guess, even a few hours is enough.

Speaker 1:

And alcohol delivers that reward immediately. You know, as soon as you take a drink, even sometimes before the alcohol hits our bloodstream, there is relief. And all that shows up within minutes. However, here's the thing. Hangovers?

Speaker 1:

That doesn't show up until much later. You're asleep by then. You're in a different state. Your entire chemistry is different. And your emotional baseline is different.

Speaker 1:

And here's where it gets a little more complicated and everything sort of intertwines. At hangover, it's not just uncomfortable. It's a full on stress state. Cortisol levels are elevated, dopamine's low, blood sugar's off, your sleep has just been blown out, your anxiety spikes, your moods drop. And from the brain's perspective, this isn't seen as punishment.

Speaker 1:

It's seen as a problem to solve. And alcohol in your brain is already on file as something that helps to alleviate exactly this kind of state. And there's a concept called opponent process theory. And basically, when you get a strong positive effect, the body responds by creating an opposite negative effect to rebalance things. So with alcohol, the initial high gets followed by a compensatory low.

Speaker 1:

And that low state or a hangover makes your brain more sensitive to anything that promises relief. So the very state that makes you swear off drinking, that's it, I'm done, no more, not tonight, also quietly makes relief more appealing later. And I didn't see this for a long time. And what I didn't realize was that my brain had already learned something important many years earlier in fact, probably in my youth. That alcohol it worked.

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It worked after a long day. It worked for shutting off the mental noise. It worked for me socially. It worked for putting me to sleep. It never had a chance to compete with that.

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And this also explains why cravings can feel so strong even after a terrible night. I'd get through my day and by the evening, hey, it was a really tough day. I deserved to have a drink. And many of us assume that cravings means a desire for alcohol, like you actively want that drink. And yes, of course, sometimes that's the case, but often it doesn't.

Speaker 1:

But if you slow that moment down, that's usually not what it feels like. It doesn't feel like, I really, really want a drink. It feels more like something feels off. What can I reach for right now? I mean, think about when you get off of work and you're like, boy, I could really use a drink.

Speaker 1:

But what you're really wanting is some relief. Right? You're restless. Maybe you're tired. Maybe you just had a bad day.

Speaker 1:

Maybe not even anything wrong enough to point to, but nothing really feels settled in either. And that's the sensation, what people call a craving. It's not pulling you toward alcohol. It's pushing you away from a state that you're in. And alcohol just happens to be the fastest thing that your brain knows how to change how you feel.

Speaker 1:

That's why cravings show up even after nights that you didn't enjoy, even after those massive hangovers, even after you told yourself, that's it. I'm done. Because the brain isn't replaying the night before. It's reacting to the moment that you're in right now. And that's why hangovers don't work as deterrents.

Speaker 1:

So what actually works? Well, change starts the moment before the drink, when the system has another way to come back online and get the relief that it's looking for and another option that doesn't rely on alcohol. And that's when the urges start to lose their urgency. Okay. Thanks for hanging out with me this week.

Speaker 1:

I'd love to hear from you. Tell me how January's going. Mikesunnyside.co. Again. I hope you have a beautiful week and cheers to your mindful drinking journey.